


right side of the tracks (can't go back anymore)

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Gore, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/M, Minor Character Death, POV Second Person, Past Child Abuse, Slytherin House Redeemed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You feel bad for Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley, who are at the center of this maelstrom, and Daphne muses that you’re just like them, only on the other side of the tracks.</p><p>“Yeah.” You chuckle. “The wrong side.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean we can’t cross them.” She says matter-of-factly, reaching across the table to lace her fingers through yours, and you, who swore never to give someone the power to destroy you, fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	right side of the tracks (can't go back anymore)

“You didn’t do it, did you?” Daphne asks nervously, when she spots you on the train. Her hair is shorter now, floats around her shoulders rather than stopping halfway down her back, and you like it better this way, maybe only partially because she’d spent nearly all of last year complaining to you while brushing it out.

You are pacing the corridors, a nervous habit started in first year, when you had no one to sit with, and she knows exactly where to find you, as always. Daphne has always been that way, always knowing where someone was and if they needed her, and you wonder if she knows how much of a blessing it is, these days, knowing where you need to be. She has heard the rumors floating around about Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle (and who hasn't, really), rumors you can confirm, and it’s only right that she’d suspect you in joining them. After all, you did have that disastrous stint in third year with Malfoy’s group.

“I didn’t.” She frowns, disbelieving, and you roll up your left sleeve to reveal a forearm unmarked by the brand that your classmates willingly offered themselves up to, over the summer. She runs her fingers over your arm, to check that you aren’t hiding anything with magic, and looks up, satisfied, as she wraps her fingers around your wrist. You are clean still, save for the philosophies that bind your heart in black ropes thicker than your wrist, and you want to stay that way. Her fingers feel like they’re wiping your sin away and you very much like the feeling. “I would never.”

“You would never.” She repeats, choking up, and embraces you like it’s the end of the world and you’re the last man standing. In a way, you are. You and her are the last of the undeclared, the last Slytherins in your year to cast their lots in with the Dark Lord, and you know just as well as you know your stance that she will not bend the knee either. She is too proud and you are too stubborn and together, you are perfect. “I knew it, I knew you would never, but they said you did and—“

You know Daphne, have always known her as deeply as she seems to know everyone else, and you hold her for what feels like hours until Malfoy and Parkinson push the two of you apart, muttering something about setting an example for the children.

You smile at Daphne once they’re far enough away, and even though it’s empty and tired, just like you have been for years, it’s a start.

* * *

The two of you escape to Hogsmeade, sometimes, and you take her to the tea shop and laugh over bad jokes as if you are a normal couple, one with no responsibilities and no part in the war coming on. If the look on Malfoy’s face is any indication, it’ll be coming sooner than later, but you’ve felt that stirring in your bones for a long time now.

It made its first appearance the summer before your fourth year, when you saw your father dusting off the mask he always kept in the trunk at the foot of the master bed. He’d gotten a little mad, after your mum died all those years ago, but you were too young to remember the last time your father killed someone.

That’s a lie.

You’ve gotten quite good at lying, over the years.

You feel bad for Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley, who are at the center of this maelstrom, and Daphne muses that you’re just like them, only on the other side of the tracks.

“Yeah.” You chuckle. “The wrong side.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t cross them.” She says matter-of-factly, reaching across the table to lace her fingers through yours, and you, who swore never to give someone the power to destroy you, fall in love.

* * *

Sixth year ends with Dumbledore falling off a tower, larger than life even in his death, and you raise your wand to the sky just as everyone else does. Daphne laces her fingers through yours as she does the same, and you both can’t help but think that this is the beginning of something you don’t want to see.

“We’re both seventeen.” You whisper in her ear, as the people start to return to their common rooms and dormitories to process this tragedy. “We could run away.”

“But we won’t.” She says, jaw set firmly. “We’ll fight.”

“On the right side.” You whisper, careful to keep your voice low, and Draco Malfoy’s glare at the two of you is enough to send you flying apart. He suspects, you realize, and is ashamed that he did not have the courage to do the same.

You laugh, standing there in the courtyard alone, because a son of the House of Nott has finally bested a Malfoy heir. He kneels before you, although not directly, and you are hiccupping and shaking when the rain begins to fall, soaking you to the bone.

You hold your mouth open for raindrops, as a child would for snowflakes, and laugh when they slide easily down your throat, imagining them melting away in a pool of acid like those Muggles your father killed when you were six years old and newly motherless. You’d been forced to stand there and watch them melt down, consumed by the green, nasty smelling liquid that your father had brewed in the cauldron downstairs.

“Watch, Theo.” He’d said, grinning maniacally, as he held your head so that it was impossible to look away, the innocents’ blood making his grip on your face all too slippery. One of the victims was a boy your own age, and while watching the child dissolve, you had wondered whether the two of you could have been friends, in another world. “This is your future. This is what you too will do, to serve the Dark Lord.”

You worried that your mother’s loss had broken him, had finally cracked the fragile part of him that had always seemed just merely strange to you before but was now rolling towards danger unchecked, because you were too young to understand death but not young enough to ignore the whispers. The Malfoys offered to take you in, at least for awhile, and your father held you close, smiling gauntly, and put on enough of a show to put them off it, all the while making you watch as he killed time and time again.

When you were eight, you told him no amount of death would bring his wife back, and were strung up by your wrists in a dungeon you didn’t even know existed for a whole night for your troubles. He repented, said he was sorry, that it was a temporary lapse in judgment and that he hoped you’d forgive him.

The strange glint in his eyes remained, though, but you were a coward and nodded, telling him that you loved him even when every cell in your body said the opposite.

When you saw the Thestrals fifth year, you let them all think it was your mother.

You never saw your mother die.

* * *

Draco moves out to the Head Boy’s dorm, so it is just you, Zabini (who’s alright, when he’s not being obnoxiously pretentious), Crabbe and Goyle (who are not much better than two rocks on a string) in the dormitory this year, and you put a pair of headphones over your ears at nearly all times, while in the room.

Blaise laughs at your newfound fascination with Muggle music and asks you for the names of artists you find “intriguing”, no doubt to make fun of you with later, and you list off everything you can remember the Muggleborn students (you’ve long since stopped using the m-word, at least in your head) in your year saying.

What you don’t tell your roommates is that your radio is permanently tuned to Potterwatch, which you found entirely on accident right before the school year, when muttering aloud to an empty house that Remus Lupin was the best teacher you ever had.

There are some things that they do not need to know.

Even Salazar Slytherin had secrets.

 _Especially_ Salazar Slytherin had secrets.

* * *

Both sides are on the move and you stay at Hogwarts over the Christmas holidays, patching up the students who trust you enough to accept your help.

The Carrows eye you with suspicion and mildly disguised displeasure until you smirk and say, in your father’s voice, that the kill will be sweeter if the prey come to you, expecting safety. They laugh, say that you are truly devoted to the cause, and you spend hours in the shower trying to wash the implications of that statement off. The water runs cold and so do you, shivering as you breathe heavily, curled up in a corner of the cubicle, and you do not come out until Zabini jokingly drawls that you must have started a new hair care routine.

Daphne stays too, mainly because Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Zabini, Parkinson and the rest have all left, and Slytherin’s common room is empty save for them and a few fifth and sixth years. A small band of Slytherins form around you, people who will defend their home at any cost, and you send one of the younger ones, the third son of a lesser branch of the Bulstrode family, to alert Weasley, Lovegood and Longbottom of Slytherin House’s commitment to justice.

The next day, Longbottom smiles at you in the hallway, while you’re on your way to the Great Hall and he’s on his way to Saturday detention, and you smile back.

* * *

“Mister Filch.” Professor—no, Headmistress, now—McGonagall say, chin held high in a way that would have made Theodore Nott, Senior, scoff and shake his head. “Please escort Miss Parkinson and the rest of Slytherin House from the hall.”

Your eyes meet Daphne’s as Filch leads you down to the dungeons, and you know this is what you’ve been building up to all year. This is what you were born for, this one act of defiance, and when Filch locks the door behind himself, your group gathers around you, looking for guidance. And you, Theodore Nott, lead the charge, blasting a hole through the door and setting Hogwarts’ greatest weapons free.

Its students.

You have never felt more alive than when you and Daphne, side by side as always, lead your tiny, ragtag band of Slytherins into the fray, throats hoarse from reminding them that Hogwarts has given them a home when others have not, that Hogwarts has given them help and knowledge and, above all, security and love, and that people who seek to destroy your home are not people worth being around. They yell with you, a chorus of angels emerging from a prison, and your faces shine bright with pride as other voices add to your chant, “for Hogwarts” and “for Harry” shouted by Gryffindors and Slytherins alike.

Everyone is finally coming together, like they always should have been, and this is the true power of Hogwarts.

This is the true magic woven into stone walls and parapets and towers.

You, Theodore Nott, Junior, are finally starting to erase years and years of Dark allegiances that stain the history of House Nott.

You are nothing like your father.

Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger catch sight of your band of Slytherins running into the battle, perfectly knotted green and silver ties immaculate as always and wands held aloft, and look surprised. You know what they are thinking, know they’re wondering why Slytherins, of all people, would fight the Dark Lord. You do not tell them that many of these children have been abused by parents who put their heart, money and souls into Death Eater philosophies, that many of them have lost family to death, madness or prison. You do not mention that some (one) of them have seen their father commit murder in front of them.

Slytherin House fights for the lost and broken, you muse, as you simply shoot a grin at your former classmates, who stare on in shock, even chancing a cheeky wave before jumping into the fray.

You’re glad your father taught you that those below you deserve no mercy, you think, as you blast down his compatriots.

Wouldn’t he be so proud, you muse as you hit Dolohov (“Uncle Anton, _please_ come play? Draco _bores_ me!”) straight in the face with a Stunner, of raising a blood traitor son?

* * *

“You look like you need a drink.” Daphne sits down beside you, a broken arm bandaged and tied up in a ragged sling, and laughs as she lays her head on your shoulder. You are dusty and dirty, a still bleeding cut above your eye sure to leave a rather impressive scar, and all you want to do is smile and laugh for years, for forever.

“As do you.” You put your arm around her shoulders, pulling her into your side. Your head and heart are still buzzing with the aftermath of the adrenaline, and you think that a nap would be in order. But there is so much to be done, so many people who need helping, and you want to do it all.

Harry Potter, the man of the year, comes over to speak to you once he notices your ties, which are in equally detention worthy states of disrepair, and frowns while trying to recall your names. You don’t expect him to, seeing as the only Slytherin people ever remember is Malfoy. Damn his memorable blond head.

“Aren’t you that really tall bloke that ran away when Hermione punched Malfoy?” Potter frowns, looking very much like Daphne’s sister when she’s concentrating, and you chuckle before nodding. “Why’d you run into a battle like that one if a third year Hermione was too scary for you?”

“Notice that I was on the same side as Granger this time, Potter.” Daphne giggles. You both do love a good joke. “Much less chance of her punching me in the face if I’m on her side.”

“Much less, but Ron’s a living counterexample.” Potter chuckles as well, running a hand through his hair. His glasses are broken, you notice, but you doubt he’ll take kindly to some stranger fixing them for him. “Thank you. Really. We couldn’t have done it without you guys. Slytherin’s contribution will be remembered.”

“Make those words into something, Potter.” Daphne speaks up. “Slytherin House will need all the help it can get, to recover from this.”

“I’ll see to it.” Potter smiles, looking old and bedraggled, but you suppose all of you do. “Things will change.”

You’ve all grown old far beyond your time, but as you lace your fingers through Daphne’s and laugh when she asks whether the position of Mrs. Nott will be open for application, you feel like this all could be for the best.


End file.
